Page 7 of Hades

He hadn’t come home until she had been sound asleep. She had felt him slide into the bed behind her, had been briefly aware of the press of his lips on her shoulder and the comforting weight of his arm around her waist as he drew her back against him before sleep had claimed her again.

When she had awoken, he had been gone again.

She could count the number of hours she had seen him this week on one hand, and she didn’t like it. The only time Hades distanced himself like this was when he was trying to shield his heart to spare it pain. Coupled with his darkening mood, she worried that something was dreadfully wrong and he knew something he didn’t want to tell her or their family.

She feared they were destined to lose this battle and everything with it.

Persephone paused in the middle of a long black gallery, the hems of the layers of her dress flowing around her ankles to settle over her bare feet. She steeled her heart. They weren’t going to lose. No one could defeat her husband. No one would take her family from her.

She would make sure of it.

Brambles erupted from the ground beneath the soles of her feet, and she clenched her fists so hard that her nails dug into her palms and vicious thorns burst from the twining black vines spreading outwards from her.

No one would take everyone she loved from her.

She wouldn’t let them.

Her sharp rise in anger had an equally as sharp decline as she thought about what it would be like to lose Hades. She had feared that happening from the moment she had set eyes on him, all those centuries ago. She should have feared the dark male who had loomed in the shadows of the trees, watching her, but instead, she had been arrested by him.

Bewitched.

Persephone’s green gaze darted to the windows to her right and she stared at the largest of the obsidian Grecian temples—the one dedicated to Hades. She needed to see him. Her focus shifted, the world beyond the window going blurry as her reflection sharpened. She stared into her eyes, at the scarlet waves that tumbled around her shoulders, at a face that hadn’t aged a day in all the time she had belonged to Hades, body and soul. That soul had changed in their centuries together, the weight it bore growing heavier with each new addition to their family and each threat to them.

Now, she felt close to breaking under it.

The brambles around her wilted and faded away and she shored up her defences, trying to drive the chill from her blood, refusing to let this break her. Her family would be fine. Hades would be fine.

She kept telling herself that, but it didn’t calm her need to see him and see with her own eyes that he was all right.

She eased to a crouch and pressed her palm to the wooden floor and closed her eyes. She reached down through the timber and stone of the palace to the earth and inhaled slowly as she connected with it, focusing her mind. Her power expanded outwards in a ring, touching everything it passed beneath and telling her of it.

The guards milling around at the exit of the mansion. Her son Ares and his wife Megan where they walked the orchard with Calindria in tow. The citizens of the Underworld where they placed tributes to Hades in the temple, seeking some kind of comfort from their god-king in these turbulent times. She moved beyond the boundaries of the palace and the valley, shifting her focus so her power flowed along one course, heading for Tartarus.

When it reached the prison and swept down into the abyss along the spiral staircase, she felt the oily darkness of its occupants. Their seething rage. Their unspent anger. Their desolation.

Theirhope.

She wanted to growl as her husband could at that.

The prisoners of Tartarus dared to hope, and she knew why. Rumours were circulating the Underworld and had no doubt reached them, and now they believed Mnemosyne would free them so they could have their revenge against Hades.

It wasn’t going to happen.

Tartarus was a fortress, with a legion of one thousand men posted there at all times. No one could escape it. No one had in as long as she had been the queen of the Underworld.

She almost scoffed. Let them hope. They would soon learn the error of their ways. When this war was done, and Hades was the victor, that hope they held would turn to despair again.

Persephone severed the connection with the earth and drew her hand back, not liking the path of her thoughts. When had her own mood grown so dark? She looked at her hand and then pushed to her feet and glanced out of the window towards the orchard.

Her gaze landed on Ares where he stood beneath one of the apple trees, appearing like a shadow in his all-black attire, but even from this distance, she knew the love and warmth that would be in his rich brown eyes as he gazed at his wife. She placed her hand to the floor and focused on him to prove herself right, savouring the comforting feel of his strength and his love, and how calm he was.

He was how she should be. Allowing dark thoughts to colour her mood, to banish the light and warmth from her, wouldn’t help matters. It would only make them worse. Hades needed her to be calm in the face of this storm, to weather it and endure without losing hope.

He needed her to be strong.

Everyone in this realm did.

Including her children.

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